TCAF Toronto Comic Festival Drops Saba Moeel, Pink Cat as Guest

Today the Toronto Comic Art Festival (TCAF) withdrew its invitation to the digital comic artist Saba Moel, author of the Pink Cat Daily comics on Instagram, as a guest on the upcoming show, after significant backlash online, reported by Bleeding Cool yesterday. TCAF did not respond to Bleeding Cool when approached for comment, but issued the following statement;

TCAF is rescinding its invitation to Pink Cat, also known as Saba Moeel, due to code of conduct violations and concerns raised by the comic book community. TCAF initially extended a programming invitation to Moeel based on their daily work of digital comics on Instagram and how personally important that work was to one of our team members. At the time of this invitation, the organization was not aware of Moeel’s online conduct, plagiarism or tracing allegations. We apologize for the scheduling and promotion of this artist.

We made a mistake. As a promise to our community, we will use this as a teachable moment as we move forward as an organization, and re-examine the checks and balances we currently use to process our programming decisions. Reading your comments, there are a few things the organization would like to address.

TCAF never accepts money to schedule guest stars. These artists are selected according to a wide range of criteria. Most TCAF star guests are funded to attend our festival through cost sharing between the festival, publishers or international cultural agencies. No one in the TCAF organization has financial ties to Moeel. TCAF is an organization made up largely of part-time staff who work in a collaborative setting. When a matter of this importance arises, we need time to come together and discuss the appropriate next steps. If you want to know who we are, you can see our names on the About page of our website, and we can be reached through our public email accounts, which can also be found on this page.TCAF does not tolerate intimidation or threats against creators, volunteers or participants attending the festival. Any member of our community who is verbally abusive, violent or blatantly unwelcoming towards any other FASD participant will be removed from the event.

If you would like to discuss this issue further with us, you can reach us at contact@torontocomics.com.We are very proud of the lineup of artists and exhibitors we have assembled for this year’s festival, and we sincerely hope that this error on our part will not overshadow the hard work of our team, our other guests and our exhibitors. .

Objections to Pink Cat’s participation in the show initially centered on its commitment to generative NFTs derived from its cartoons, a mixture of environmental issues regarding the cost of energy, the attractiveness of NFTs to money launderers , the ephemeral Ponzi-style nature of NFTs, and what is seen as over-commercialization of art, but continued further as people unearthed swipes she had made of other people’s work, as well as statements considered to be instead problem. We did a few sweeps yesterday, but many more have been reported.

Yesterday, Saba Moelle posted his response to much of the comment including an explanation for the sweep/reference, saying “I’m from an area completely decimated by white supremacy and imperialism, and someone saying ‘that’s a Disney character you drew’ like yes…it’s a well known meme we women use on web 2. Because our families fled EXPLOSIVE BUILDINGS, sanctions because we don’t use the central banking system, we don’t “We didn’t have access to our own culture. American culture was forced on us. , even the English language…we should speak our own language” as well as adding “What do you think of an older white man probably saying to the only Muslim comic artist who was invited to the ‘stay at home’ event bc I embraced my blockchain business and raised funds through my own followers instead of through VCs?

Saba Moelle, who created her Pink Cat Daily comics on Instagram for around five years with a following of around a quarter of a million people, did not respond to requests for comment on the FASD ruling earlier today. . Although I understand she plans to make media appearances later today.